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"China’s national competition to produce “civilized cities” creates new guidelines by which cities should be measured. They include greening and upgrading of si

by proc0 7y ago

"China’s national competition to produce “civilized cities” creates new guidelines by which cities should be measured. They include greening and upgrading of sidewalks but also smart policing through visual recognition, pet management, and the creation of “civilizing barriers” to prevent jaywalking and “civilizing banners” to build spirit." This is literally a nightmare distopia. Why would you allow government to own you as a person, that is insane and always leads to some individual gaining too much power and making people suffer through their perceived, perpetual benevolence (acting as if they can do no harm).

shantly 7y ago
As far as what's described in that passage, none of that looks too bad aside from the smart policing. Which everyone else seems to be getting too, anyway. The next worst is the "civilizing banners" thing but then again public advertising exists and is everywhere, so, call it even.
- schoen 7y ago
  I find it interesting that Americans still tolerate advertising meant to influence behavior and civility (for example, public health ads or other kinds of public service announcements), but these ads now have to be much more subtle than they did in, say, World War II. https://adcouncil.org/Our-Campaigns https://adcouncil.org/Our-Campaigns https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:World_War_II_posters https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:World_War_II_pos... Somehow, contemporary ads aimed at influencing behavior and opinion elsewhere feel radically unsubtle and upsetting from a U.S. cultural point of view, but that doesn't mean that we've settled on the idea that nobody ought to do that at all.
knolax 7y ago
> They include greening and upgrading of sidewalks That's a bad thing? > “civilizing barriers” to prevent jaywalking Already a thing everywhere else[0] > “civilizing banners” to build spirit." You mean like PSAs? > smart policing through visual recognition, Ok that one seems like a poor idea. How is this supposed to be a "nightmare dystopia"? It's reasonable to describe things like mass surveilance as dystopic but are sidewalk barriers really the mole-hill we're supposed to die on? [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_verge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_verge
- proc0 7y ago
  That might not have been the best example of it but it is the impression I get from the article. Some more (maybe better) examples ... "The city, in this understanding, is no longer a community of life or a subject of economic and social development; it has become a product, evaluated by objective measures and ranked according to what is effectively a price or value matrix." And then this "product" seems to be fully controlled and at the mercy of the government: "Until 2014, China’s National Civilized City Assessment System manual had nine general evaluation categories. The new manual introduced that year featured ten main indexes and 30 points of evaluation." Which means they can change the criteria at any time for whatever reason. And then finally the article ends with a Mao quote, which not only is it like ending an article with a Hitler quote, but the quote itself is another great example, "Once, standing on Tiananmen Square, he pointed south and said that, looking to the horizon, there should be a “forest of chimneys.” Oh great, Mao thought he was playing a game of Civ or Age of Empires.
K0SM0S 7y ago
IMHO this is measuring things with a rather ethnocentric view (your current place / culture / time in economy and history). Makes sense in your context, but not so much in today's China's. There is a massive (high eight-figures) migration from rural to (increasingly newly-built) urban centers taking place over a generation or two (read: insanely fast), and a whole lot of small problems just become massive at scale; too much jaywalking in a —very— crowded city leads to deaths or snail traffic, plain and simple. See how people die in India every single day in overcrowded train stations. Concentrations to a degree we are seldom acquainted with in the West, but that Asia knows at lot more, come with necessary rules enforced to a tighter degree. We don't have to agree that others do it better, there's certainly a reason why we're here and not there; but that doesn't mean they have it wrong in their context — and unless you actually go there, you really can't judge. Merely try to understand 'why this' or 'why not that' and hope to form a not-too-skewed idea, which is very hard to do from incomplete sources filtered by one's own perception/bias.

by proc0 7y ago

shantly 7y ago

As far as what's described in that passage, none of that looks too bad aside from the smart policing. Which everyone else seems to be getting too, anyway. The next worst is the "civilizing banners" thing but then again public advertising exists and is everywhere, so, call it even.

schoen 7y ago
I find it interesting that Americans still tolerate advertising meant to influence behavior and civility (for example, public health ads or other kinds of public service announcements), but these ads now have to be much more subtle than they did in, say, World War II. https://adcouncil.org/Our-Campaigns https://adcouncil.org/Our-Campaigns https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:World_War_II_posters https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:World_War_II_pos... Somehow, contemporary ads aimed at influencing behavior and opinion elsewhere feel radically unsubtle and upsetting from a U.S. cultural point of view, but that doesn't mean that we've settled on the idea that nobody ought to do that at all.

knolax 7y ago

> They include greening and upgrading of sidewalks That's a bad thing? > “civilizing barriers” to prevent jaywalking Already a thing everywhere else[0] > “civilizing banners” to build spirit." You mean like PSAs? > smart policing through visual recognition, Ok that one seems like a poor idea. How is this supposed to be a "nightmare dystopia"? It's reasonable to describe things like mass surveilance as dystopic but are sidewalk barriers really the mole-hill we're supposed to die on? [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_verge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_verge

proc0 7y ago
That might not have been the best example of it but it is the impression I get from the article. Some more (maybe better) examples ... "The city, in this understanding, is no longer a community of life or a subject of economic and social development; it has become a product, evaluated by objective measures and ranked according to what is effectively a price or value matrix." And then this "product" seems to be fully controlled and at the mercy of the government: "Until 2014, China’s National Civilized City Assessment System manual had nine general evaluation categories. The new manual introduced that year featured ten main indexes and 30 points of evaluation." Which means they can change the criteria at any time for whatever reason. And then finally the article ends with a Mao quote, which not only is it like ending an article with a Hitler quote, but the quote itself is another great example, "Once, standing on Tiananmen Square, he pointed south and said that, looking to the horizon, there should be a “forest of chimneys.” Oh great, Mao thought he was playing a game of Civ or Age of Empires.

K0SM0S 7y ago

IMHO this is measuring things with a rather ethnocentric view (your current place / culture / time in economy and history). Makes sense in your context, but not so much in today's China's. There is a massive (high eight-figures) migration from rural to (increasingly newly-built) urban centers taking place over a generation or two (read: insanely fast), and a whole lot of small problems just become massive at scale; too much jaywalking in a —very— crowded city leads to deaths or snail traffic, plain and simple. See how people die in India every single day in overcrowded train stations. Concentrations to a degree we are seldom acquainted with in the West, but that Asia knows at lot more, come with necessary rules enforced to a tighter degree. We don't have to agree that others do it better, there's certainly a reason why we're here and not there; but that doesn't mean they have it wrong in their context — and unless you actually go there, you really can't judge. Merely try to understand 'why this' or 'why not that' and hope to form a not-too-skewed idea, which is very hard to do from incomplete sources filtered by one's own perception/bias.